


Cultural Misunderstandings

by antonomasia09



Category: The Course of Honour - Avoliot
Genre: 5+1 Things, Cultural Differences, Established Relationship, Gender Issues, M/M, Past Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 07:12:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13049103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antonomasia09/pseuds/antonomasia09
Summary: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.ORFive times Jainan and Kiem thought that a word meant different things, and one time they realized it meant the same to both of them.





	Cultural Misunderstandings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blue_spruce](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blue_spruce/gifts).



> Happy holidays, blue_spruce! I hope you enjoy.

Blue

A few weeks after the abduction incident, once the papers had moved on to covering other scandals, Kiem suggested a trip to the market. Jainan agreed, with understandable reluctance. Reporters were still following them around on occasion, hoping for a new soundbyte on the old story.

Fortunately, it looked like they were in the clear today. They wandered from booth to booth, with Bel trailing a few steps behind, tapping out messages on her wristband. Kiem hoped it was nothing urgent - the weather was unseasonably warm, and they had been enjoying tasting all the street food and admiring the knick-knacks. 

Eventually, they stopped in front of a cloth merchant’s stall, since Jainan needed a new shirt for formal occasions. Kiem made all the appropriate oohing and aahing noises as Jainan held up various bolts of cloth and they tried to imagine what the finished product would look like. It wasn’t difficult - Jainan had a way of making any piece of clothing look good. 

“Which one do you like best?” Kiem asked.

Jainan thought for a moment. “The blue one,” he decided.

Kiem squinted at the pile of brightly-colored fabrics in front of Jainan. None of them were blue.

“Which one?” he repeated.

“The blue one,” Jainan said again, pointing this time at an indigo fabric scrap with gold embroidery.

Kiem tried to come up with a tactful way of asking if Jainan was colorblind. He ended up just shrugging, and saying, “That doesn’t look blue to me. Bel?”

She shook her head. “Purple.”

“Really?” Jainan looked intrigued. He pointed to the tunic he was currently wearing. “What color would you call this?”

“Red,” Kiem answered. Bel nodded.

“I would say orange,” Jainan told them.

“Huh,” Kiem said. “Is this a Thean thing?”

“Maybe,” Jainan said, thoughtful. “You know, that would actually explain a lot.”

“What do you mean?”

“When the ambassador came to Thea to escort me here for my first wedding, she brought a traditional marriage blanket as a gift on behalf of Iskat, but it had the wrong colors for my clan,” Jainan said. “Ressid and I assumed that she just hadn’t bothered to check, but now I’m wondering if she really couldn’t tell.”

Of course Jainan would have been too polite to say anything, but Kiem couldn’t help feeling embarrassed by the Empire’s mistake. “We can fix that,” he said. “Let’s get some fabric for a new blanket while we’re here.”

Jainan pointed out the correct shades of green and provided the vendor with a sample image, Bel haggled down the price for them, and soon they were ready to move on.

“You know what this means, right?” Kiem said, giving Jainan’s hand a quick squeeze as they followed their noses in the direction of a roasted nut cart. “We’re going to be have to be a lot more careful about coordinating our outfits in the future.”

***

Prince

Before coming to Iskat, Jainan was given a week of intensive etiquette lessons. How to hold a fork in the formal Iskat manner, in what order guests to the home should be greeted, what hand gestures might be considered offensive. Somehow though, perhaps because the concept was so deeply ingrained in their culture, Jainan’s tutor neglected to mention that titles of nobility on Iskat were gender-neutral.

At the banquet following his wedding, Jainan was introduced to prince after prince, some of whom had a full head of braids. He hoped he did a good job hiding his surprise, but it put him off-balance for the whole evening, and made him feel utterly out of place on this strange new planet.

“How do you not know these things?” Taam said later that evening, when Jainan asked about the possibility of female princes. “Are you really so uncivilized on Thea?”

Jainan sputtered a little and attempted to defend his homeworld, but Taam cut him off.

“Whatever,” he said. “Let’s just go to bed.”

When Jainan told Kiem about his early confusion, Kiem just thought it was hilarious. “Oh, please tell me you tried to refer to the Emperor as ‘Empress,’” he said.

“I did, actually.” Jainan blushed. “Not to her face, though.”

“Aw, oh well,” said Kiem. “That’s probably for the best.” His laughter faded. “You know I don’t think you’re uncivilized or anything, right? Thea’s just different. And Taam was an ass.”

“I know,” Jainan said. It was still a relief to hear Kiem say it out loud, though.

“I still think it’s not fair that you had to give up everything to come here,” Kiem said. “If there’s anything I can do to make you more comfortable, let me know.”

Jainan wasn’t sure he would ever be comfortable on Iskat. It was too cold, and he was too obviously Thean. But, looking at Kiem’s determined face, he knew that his partner would do everything in his power to change his mind.

***

Peanut Butter

Kiem normally thought of himself as an easygoing and patient person, but right now, he was ready to grab the nearest heavy object and smash his dispenser to pieces. “No,” he yelled. “For the hundredth time, I said, ‘peanut butter.’ As in, butter made from peanuts. Don’t you dare tell me there’s no such thing.”

The dispenser just bleeped an error message at Kiem, and offered him goat cheese instead.

With a cry of frustration, Kiem threw himself onto the couch.

Naturally, that was the moment that Jainan came in, collapsed staff in one hand and shirt in the other. He paused in the doorway, still sensitive to Kiem’s moods even though they had been married for six months already. Kiem was pleased to see that the hesitation was brief, though, and Jainan didn’t look noticeably tenser when he continued on into their rooms.

“What is the matter?” Jainan asked, dropping his shirt in the laundry collector and leaning his staff against the wall.

Kiem let out a loud sigh. “It was supposed to be a surprise. But I guess I might as well tell you, since I can’t get it to work anyway.” He glared at the dispenser. Its power light blinked back at him innocently.

“You mentioned the other day that you missed Thean peanut butter, so I was trying to get the dispenser to make some. Looks like the last upgrade knocked out all my special settings, though, and it’s refusing to make anything that isn’t on its menu.”

Jainan’s face took on the particular shade of blankness he used while trying to keep from smiling or laughing. “You were making peanut butter,” he repeated slowly.

“I was trying. But the stupid dispenser keeps insisting that butter can only be made from milk.”

Jainan’s mouth twitched as he lost the battle to keep a straight face. “It’s right. Peanut butter isn’t actually butter,” he explained. “It’s crushed peanuts mixed with oil.”

Wait, what? “Why is it called peanut butter then?”

“I don’t know,” Jainan admitted.

“Jainan,” Kiem said. “I love you and I respect your culture. But seriously, what the hell?”

Jainan laughed. “Thank you for trying to make it for me,” he said. “But it’s all right. I’ll pick some up in a few weeks when we visit Thea. In the meantime, let’s see if we can convince the dispenser to make us an eggplant.”

***

Horse

“What is that?” The beast turned its head at the sound of Jainan’s voice, and he fought the urge to flee back inside the palace to escape its furious gaze.

“It’s a horse,” Kiem said, perfectly calm, like it should be obvious. “How have you never seen a horse before?”

The animal was certainly…wearing a saddle. But that was where the similarities ended. It had claws instead of hooves, and far more sharp teeth than belonged in the mouth of anything Jainan would call a horse.

“You expect me to be able to ride that thing?” Jainan asked, incredulous. It looked like it was just waiting for him to get close before taking a bite out of him.

“It’s easy,” Kiem waved a hand. “You climb up the tail and sit in the saddle and direct it by tugging its horns in the direction you want to go.”

Jainan didn’t bother to argue that a horse shouldn’t have horns let alone a climbable tail. Instead, he said, “And it doesn’t murder you immediately?”

“Of course not,” Kiem laughed. “It’s perfectly tame.”

“Really.”

“Yeah, the trainers are very careful about making sure that only the most well-behaved horses are allowed in the palace. I think they’re worried that if someone from the royal family gets hurt, the Emperor will chop their heads off. Not that she does that sort of thing. I saw wild horses once, though, on a trip outside the city. That was pretty exciting.”

That didn’t sound exciting. That sounded terrifying.

Jainan had no desire to climb on this animal’s back, but he also didn’t want to be the one to explain to Hren Halesar why he was the only nobleman not riding down the parade route half an hour from now.

He reached out a hesitant hand, and touched the horse’s flank, feather-light. Encouraged by the fact that it didn’t turn around and chomp his arm off, Jainan patted it gingerly and then moved closer.

“We should go to the zoo some time,” Kiem suggested as he scrambled up onto his own. “You think horses are scary? Wait until you see the penguins.”

***

Poetry

The memory of their first visit to Thea together was something Kiem would always cherish. Other than the part where they discovered that Kiem had a peanut allergy, but hey, it wasn’t a vacation for them without a near-death experience, right?

Anyway. While Jainan was steadily regaining his confidence, he still held himself stiffly in the presence of strangers on Iskat, and rarely spoke in front of them, embarrassed by his accent. But the moment he stepped off the shuttle and breathed in the smoggy Thean shuttleport air, his whole body relaxed. It was a revelation.

They spent most of their time at formal events and on diplomatic visits, but the third evening, Jainan rushed over to Kiem and told him, “Ressid says there’s a poetry performance tomorrow night at the concert hall. Would you like to go?”

Kiem had never been a fan of poetry. As a member of the ruling family, his tutors had tried to instill in him a sense of pride in his cultural heritage, but they had succeeded just about as well at that as they had with trying to teach him anything else. Still, Jainan looked excited, and that was rare enough even now that Kiem agreed readily.

They arrived at the theater the following evening to find it already packed. Their seats were in the balcony, and as they made their way up the stairs, Kiem was fascinated by the people they passed, all in brightly-colored tunics and speaking at least half a dozen different languages. He only paid half his attention to Jainan, who was explaining that it was traditional to perform this poem every year at harvest time.

The curtains rose. Kiem was expecting a single performer, possibly carrying a prop or a lyre, who would drone on and on in a monotone chant for at least an hour.

Instead, a colorful scene was revealed. There were half a dozen performers throwing themselves into acrobatic tumbles in sparkling costumes, with a painted backdrop behind. They spoke to one another in metered rhyme, sometimes breaking into song with the help of a full band. Kiem couldn’t follow the plot, if there even was one, but he was mesmerized nonetheless.

“What did you think?” Jainan asked on their way back to their guest quarters in Lady Ressid’s home.

“It was amazing,” Kiem said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Jainan beamed.

***

+1 Love

Jainan had always known that his marriage would be a political one. He’d hoped that, like his own parents, he would eventually settle into an easy companionship with his partner, but understood that it wasn’t a requirement.

Even with this knowledge, it had hurt a little when Taam had told Jainan that he’d had no interest in forming a real relationship. He’d accepted the compromise of pretending in public, and hoped that maybe someday Taam would change his mind.

Now, leaning against Kiem on the couch as Bel delivered their new blanket, his marriage to Taam felt like distant history. Bel unfolded the blanket to reveal Clan Feria’s intricate design, carefully embroidered on a forest green background, and surrounded by several other lighter shades of green.

Kiem slid down Jainan’s chest until his head was resting in Jainan’s lap. “What do you think?” he said.

“It’s perfect,” Jainan said, and bent over to kiss him. “You didn’t have to do this,” he whispered.

“Of course I did,” Kiem said. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” Jainan said.

He smiled. Jainan and Kiem still had communication difficulties sometimes, causing confusion with the names of various foods, animals, and more. But on this one matter, at least, he knew they were in perfect agreement.


End file.
